


One Hundred Years of Solitude

by Mystica83



Category: The Old Guard (Movie 2020)
Genre: Family Dynamics, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Implied/Referenced Suicide, M/M, Other, References to Depression
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-10
Updated: 2020-08-10
Packaged: 2021-03-05 20:00:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 3,573
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25821037
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mystica83/pseuds/Mystica83
Summary: Five stages of grief between Merrick Laboratories and The Prospect of Whitby.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 49





	1. Joe: Anger

**Author's Note:**

> It occurred to me that Booker’s depression over the loss of his family pushed him to to seek out death, akin to committing suicide. Of course, this begs the question: how do you commit suicide if you’re immortal? 
> 
> I wrote this fic because I wanted to explore a few things through it: 1) the five stages of grief, 2) clinical depression and 3) the suicidal tendencies it can incite. I don’t intend this to be an offensive piece, as that was not my intention when I wrote it, and I am not a clinical psychologist, so please don’t use this as a diagnosis if something about it strikes a chord with you (although I encourage you to seek one out, should you conclude that you need one). FYI: I did pull examples from personal experience, anecdotal observation and some literature that I found insightful. I hope you find this fic enjoyable and thought-provoking, both for its content and style. Let me know what you think.

Joe waited until Nicky got in the shower. He didn’t want him to see what he was about to do.

As soon as he heard the pipes groan and the water turn on, he slammed his fist into Booker’s face so hard he felt his jaw crunch under his knuckles. Booker stumbled sideways, spitting blood and a sliver of tooth.

“That was for Nicky,” he growled.

Joe had a split-second before he felt Nile’s arms hook around him. He got close enough to slam Booker with a head butt that broke his nose and sent him sprawling backwards. 

“That was for Andy,” he sneered.

Nile was trying to pull him off his feet by throwing her weight backwards. But centuries-worth of his combat skills easily outdid hers, and Joe shrugged her off, aiming his fury at Booker again. He was able to split Booker’s cheekbone and break two ribs before Nile was on him again. He vaguely noticed Andy, watching stoically from a corner of the room.

A minutes-long struggle ensued between Nile and himself. She put up a valiant effort to prevent him from pounding Booker further into the ground. However, Nile was no match for Joe’s strength, and he knew it was all she could do to keep him from smashing a lamp bulb into Booker’s eye as the latter choked on his own cracked molars. He felt Nile’s grip slip and charged Booker once more.

“Andy!” he heard Nile shout.

Andy stepped in front of him, and Joe stopped short. He knew that if he continued this fight, he’d have to engage her. Joe could potentially hurt Andy, and this injury would be different from the ones before, more permanent. He knew he would never do that to her, and he knew that she knew that, too, so he decided to let Booker be. Looking past Andy, Joe aimed one more shot at Booker's broken face, reared back and spat. 

“And that was for me,” he hissed.


	2. Nicky: Denial

“Joe? Shower’s ready. Rubbish, but ready,” Nicky said quietly.

Nicky walked barefoot through the room, trying not to step on broken glass. He put a hand on Joe’s shoulder and led him back to the bathroom. He hoped no one noticed he still had brains in his hair.

They went in and closed the door. Joe took off his bloody clothes while Nicky turned the shower back on and took his towel off.

“Did you not finish?” Joe asked.

“I figured I’d leave the water running until you sorted things out. Give you some privacy,” Nicky answered.

Nicky knew what would ensue when he left the room, which is why he showered first. He didn’t want Joe bottling up his anger any longer than absolutely necessary, but he also knew that Joe would never subject Nicky to the pain of watching him brutally punish the closest thing they had to a brother. 

He had decided to turn on the cold water and let it run for five minutes, giving Joe just enough time to get things off his chest, but not enough time to break all the furniture. With the exception of the lamp, everything went smoothly.

“Thank you,” Joe said simply.

They stepped into the shower together, Nicky getting under the water first. He handed the shampoo bottle to Joe and turned around so Joe’s fingers could work out all the dried blood before he soaped his hair. 

Nicky relished the feeling of Joe’s fingers on his scalp, erasing all evidence of the day’s events. He sighed, wanting so badly to pretend this was their moment in Malta, that this shower would lead to events that had nothing to do with everything he didn’t want to think about.

Nicky sighed again.

“Feel nice?” Joe asked, a tender note in his voice.

Nicky nodded, but couldn’t say anything. He sighed again. And again. Until the sighs became sobs and he turned into Joe’s shoulder, as Joe wrapped his arms around him and murmured love in Italian.

“ _He’s our own. Our family. He would never do this,_ ” Nicky whispered.

Joe said nothing.

“ _How could we not see the depths of the pain he was in? Pain enough to seek death out._ ”

No answer.

“ _This is our fault. We should have seen. We should have helped_.”

Nicky felt Joe’s body grow warm at the suggestion. Joe pulled him back a little, and looked him in the face.

“ _This was NOT_ _our fault, Nicolo. He had this planned for months. You’re asking questions with no answers, because they won’t make sense. Sebastien was in pain, yes, and I agree, we should have been more vigilant, especially considering his alcoholism. But he also had his part to blame in this; he handled it poorly and I refuse to bear the weight of his shitty decisions if he was the one ultimately responsible for fracturing our family. If he was hurting so badly, he should have come to us, not Copely or Merrick.”_

Nicky paused to think about that for a moment. He recalled what it was like to come back after dying: a jarring, horrific experience, so blindingly painful that coherent thought is impossible during the first few seconds of revival, let alone rational decision-making.

Nicky met Joe’s eyes, and he knew that Joe understood that feeling, too.

“ _But Yusuf, if he was in so much pain, how could we expect him to think_ reasonably _enough to ask?_ ” 

Joe sighed, closed his eyes and leaned his forehead against Nicky’s.

They wept silently, until the water ran cold.


	3. Andy: Depression

“Andy, the boys mentioned the water pressure is getting low. Do you mind if I go next? I’ve got glass in my braids I need to wash out,” Nile asked. 

Dressed in fresh clothes, Joe and Nicky had gone for a walk, and Andy didn’t have the energy to get off the couch just yet. She nodded her consent, which left her and Booker alone in the safehouse, sitting three feet across from each other.

The silence was deafening.

After several minutes, he spoke. “I’m sorry, Andy.” 

“Whatever. Shit happens. Imagine if you’d shot me in the head,” Andy said with a laugh.

“Jesus…it didn’t even occur to me...”

“That your aim could have spared us a lot of heartache?” she finished for him.

He looked up at her, mortified.

Andy looked away. Owning up to her feelings was going to be rough.

“You think you’re special, Book? That you’re the only one that wants to stop getting fucked by this immortal train?”

She waited for a response. Nothing.

“You know,” she continued, ”after I gave up looking for Quynh, I would cry myself to sleep, only to wake up and cry for hours in the morning. As the years passed, I would purposely drown myself in the bathtub, shoot myself, stab myself, walk off of fire escapes, run in front of trains...anything that might make the end come sooner.”

“And then one day, I woke up and realized I hadn’t been happy in so long, I’d forgotten what it felt like. I just stopped feeling, because I had no happiness to compare anything to, anymore. Loneliness just took over.”

She heard Booker stop breathing for a minute. She knew she’d hit a nerve.

“After a while, the loneliness just became a normal part of my day. Like white noise. I used to be able to tune it out. But now, the loneliness is so exhausting, that it takes an entire bottle of vodka just to be able to ignore it long enough to fall asleep. So believe me, I understand.” 

She heard Booker sigh, and knew he understood only too well.

“I have longed for death so badly, that had you been honest about your intentions and offered me the choice first, I might have actually considered going with you. The possibility of getting a little respite from all this bullshit is understandable, Booker, even forgivable...”

She paused.

Like a slingshot, Andy’s hand reached out and grabbed Booker by the shirt. Pulling him close, she leveled her eyes with his and stared him down, her voice gravelly and low.

“What is NOT forgivable, is the fact that you made that choice _for_ me. For Joe. For Nicky. We didn’t choose this life, nor do we get to choose when to leave it, so you figured you’d hijack the only agency we had in this shitty game - the power to choose what we _do_ with our immortality - because you selfishly assumed you understood our grief.”

She watched him, unblinking, as a tear rolled down his cheek.

“So, if you were going to shoot me, your dumb ass should have shot me in the head and ended my life properly. Because I have to _live_ with this feeling now, and I’m scared that I won’t have enough life left to learn how to forgive you,” she hissed.

Andy let go of him as she heard Nile walk out of the bathroom. She stood up and walked towards it, leaving Booker to himself.

She closed the door before he could hear a sob escape her throat.


	4. Nile: Bargaining

Nile walked across the room, pulled a box out of a shopping bag and walked back to the bathroom. “Andy, I picked up some waterproof bandages at the drug store earlier. Can I come in?” she asked through the door.

“Sure. It’s open,” came Andy’s muffled reply. 

She walked in to see Andy removing the last of the bloody gauze on her side. “I figured you’d want to shower after we finished driving,” explained Nile, “and since I didn’t know if you were taking us to a hotel or a hospital, I thought it best to be prepared.”

“Thank you, Nile,” Andy replied kindly. “That was very considerate.”

Nile smiled wryly as she worked to apply the new bandage. “Well, the shower sucks as it is. Let’s not add infection to injury.”

She heard Andy chuckle. “Yeah, I don’t think Book’s conscience could handle that,” she said flatly.

Nile looked up, having become aware of what she’d just heard. “Wait... _Booker_ shot you?”

Andy sighed. “Yeah. I guess he thought he was doing me a favor,” she said.

Nile finished applying the bandages and left Andy to her shower. 

She walked over to the couch and sat next to Booker. She needed to make sure there were no more tiny glass shards in her hair, so she began undoing her braids.

They sat there for a while, Nile unbraiding patiently, Booker uncomfortably stiff.

“So, you ok?” she asked suddenly.

He stared at her, a deer in the headlights. 

“You fell off a building, onto a car, and you want to know if _I’m_ ok?” he asked.

“Well, yeah. You decided to do something pretty destructive to you and your team, and that decision probably came from an unhealthy place. It’s pretty obvious you’re hurting, so...are you ok?” she asked again.

Booker raised an eyebrow at her. “Oh, you’re a shrink now?” he asked, defensively.

Nile rolled her eyes. Machismo was _so_ last century.

“Dude, I’m military. You think I can’t recognize mental illness when I see it?” 

Booker lowered his eyebrow. “Ok doc,” he said, cynically. “Psycholo-gize me.”

Nile sat, pensively unbraiding her hair for several minutes. Andy had finished showering but hadn’t come out of the bathroom yet, so she kept on thinking, uninterrupted.

“Nothin’, huh?” Booker offered smugly. 

“Oh, there’s plenty, trust me. A suicide attempt is never simple. Sometimes impulsive, sometimes planned, but never simple.”

Booker looked confused. “Who said I wanted to commit suicide? I just wanted to not be immortal anymore.”

Nile sighed, her fingers still unbraiding her hair. She suddenly felt like the only adult in the room.

“I once read about a study done on 29 Golden Gate Bridge suicide survivors that all stated that they regretted their decision to jump _as they were falling_. One man even said that he realized that everything he thought unfixable in his life was totally fixable - except for having just jumped.”

Booker’s face was completely blank. “I don’t follow.”

Nile tried again. “You’re immortal, which means suicide isn’t an option, right? So you did the next most destructive thing: you suicided the closest thing you have to a family, for the sake of ending your pain. You even shot Andy, to get you closer to that goal.”

Nile noticed a tiny flinch in Booker’s otherwise impassive expression.

She continued. “If you craved death enough to put an end to your and Andy’s pain, you should have been ecstatic when you saw that she could die. But you weren’t, were you? You regretted the sacrifice of your family almost immediately after you shot her, because you realized it wasn’t worth losing them just to end your sorrow.”

Nile watched as Booker’s face underwent a series of emotions. She didn’t quite know what he landed on, and she didn’t want to push the issue too far, lest she influence his thoughts with too much of her opinion. She was no therapist. Better to let him work it out for himself.

After a few minutes, Booker exhaled. “Geez kid, where’d you get this from?” he asked.

Nile stopped unbraiding, reached over and covered his hand with hers. “I’ve seen it before.” 

“Military?” he asked.

“Yeah,” Nile answered. “Dizz needed a little help once, and I held her hand the whole way to the base clinic. That’s how our friendship began.” She stopped talking before she made herself cry, and closed her eyes.

“Are you praying for me?” asked Booker incredulously.

“Do you think you’re not worth my prayers?” Nile gently whispered.

She opened her eyes and saw tears in Booker’s lashes. Nile could not imagine what it must have been like to carry so much sorrow for so long, and she knew she had no right to judge Booker’s decisions, no matter how bad they may have been. But he had to know he was still worth his existence.

“You need more help that I know how to give, Booker. Please, for your sake and ours, seek it out. Everything will start to get better when you do,” she said.

One last squeeze of his hand, and Nile went back to unbrading her hair. She looked up when she heard Andy exit the bathroom and watched Booker head into it. As he turned, he met her eyes and she smiled. “Careful, the shower’s got a mind of its own,” she warned.

Andy went to lay down on the bed. “I’m going to try and sleep some of this pain off. Wake me when the boys get back, please,” she said.

“Sure,” answered Nile.

She looked back at Booker, but he had already disappeared into the bathroom. Had he heard her words? Had she said something that resonated with him? Nile hoped so. She had already lost her old family, her old friends...she couldn’t lose her new family. She couldn’t lose the only thing she had left.

She took a deep breath and prayed one more time.

“ _Please God, let Booker listen to me. I promise I’ll do whatever you want, if you’ll just make him listen to me, just this once.”_


	5. Booker: Acceptance

Booker had to stop himself from slamming the door shut. Nile’s analysis had unnerved him.

 _Naive little girl. What does she know? She’s an eighth my age, and an insignificant fraction of Andy’s_ , he grumbled internally.

Booker stripped, stepped into the shower, turned the water on, and waited. No water. Strange sound. Weird.

 _This shower_ is _terrible,_ he thought. _And what is that banging sound?_

Usually, whenever he’d stayed in places where the pipes banged in the wall, it was because the flow was slowed down somehow, and he’d usually end up under a trickle of water. But a complete lack of water was more than annoying.

 _Let’s see what happens if I turn the cold water off and turn the hot water all the way up._ He waited, listening, as the banging got louder. He looked up at the shower head, which had started to vibrate.

The shower head shot off the pipe, directly onto his eye, instantly blinding him.

“Ow! Fuck!”

He touched his face and felt vitreous humor leak onto his hand. _Gross_. He waited a couple of minutes, until his eye healed and his eyesight came back.

He was surprised at how much damage that did. Crappy showers were not known for their lethality. _Well, at least it got me instead of Andy. I’m glad._ He would have been sorry to see her hurt like that, especially now that she couldn’t heal anymore. He started to reach down for the shower head, when suddenly, he froze.

There it was. The epiphany.

He’d rather him hurt than her. Because...he loved her. He loved all of them. 

_When did I lose sight of that?_

Booker looked back up at a single stream of water as the realization crept in. Andy was right: he had had the audacity to allow his heartache to become his only companion, and forget he had others in his life. He let his despair rob him of his love for his family, and had selfishly offered them up as the price to end his pain. 

They were upset about that - rightfully so - because he had allowed himself to forget the simple but important fact that he loved them. They were also upset because he had forgotten that they loved _him_ , and had he succeeded in achieving an end to his life, he would have removed himself from theirs, without considering how much it would hurt _them_ to lose him.

How could he even think they would appreciate _losing a family member_? When he lost Jean-Pierre, he was devastated, regardless of how things had turned out between him and his son. That kind of pain was something he wouldn’t wish on his worst enemy, let alone people he cared about.

 _My god, Nile was right,_ he thought _._

This grief was destructive, and not just to him. To everyone who didn’t deserve it. He needed to get help. 

_But..._

He knew he couldn't ask them for help, not right now. Thanks to his impulsiveness, he had destroyed parts of his relationship with everybody. They would need time to stop being angry with him, to re-learn that they could trust him. He needed them, but the damage he had caused meant that they couldn’t help him just yet. They deserved time to heal, too. Why had he believed they wouldn’t have wanted to help? They loved him as much as he loved them.

Booker knew there would be a price to pay for his foolishness. He had to be ready to accept that.


	6. Epilogue

Nicky and Joe had been gone long enough for Nile to undo her braids, take out her extensions, run back to the drug store to get some leave-in conditioner and a comb and re-braid her hair. By then, Andy was restless and hungry. Booker suggested an old haunt, down by the Thames.

They needed to discuss what to do about the precarious situation they were in. There were concerns about how best to secure safety and secrecy, especially with Nile being so inexperienced in her immortality. They had to figure out what to do about the random bits and pieces of themselves in a lab that was probably being investigated by the police at that very moment. Then there was the issue of the broken dynamics of their team, which was by far, the biggest concern. 

Booker stepped out during that part of the conversation, drink in hand, not wanting to be present while the rest of the team discussed his fate.

Joe insisted on severe punishment for having broken silence and betraying them into the greedy hands of Big Pharma. Nothing permanent, but possibly involving a coffin and the ocean. Nicky and Andy still loved Booker, but their hearts were hurt, too, and would need time to mend. A period of exile was suggested. One thousand years, on the other side of the world, and a moratorium on all subsequent missions.

Nile was the only one that thought that was a bad idea.

“You realize he’s suffering from depression, a condition whose symptoms are only exacerbated by isolation and you want to send him away?!” she asked, her voice rising in frustration. “On what planet does that sound like a good idea?” 

“Should we just forgive him, then?” Joe asked angrily. 

“Might be the best option for everyone,” Nile replied, unfazed. She knew Joe was just as hurt as everyone else, but she also knew neglect was a bad solution to this problem.

She stepped out to have a few words with Booker, then joined the team when they came to their decision. Andy delivered the news.

Booker watched from the shore of the river as his family walked away from him. He met Joe’s gaze and nodded his understanding. Joe almost looked sad. Nile looked concerned, while Nicky couldn’t bear to watch his brother fade into obscurity, and turned away. Andy didn’t look back, for fear of yielding to the knowledge of how much she would miss him.

After they left, Booker trudged up the steps of the pub and posted up at the bar.

The bartender came over. “Party broke up, I see. One for the road, then?” he asked.

“Make it two,” replied Booker. “I’ll be here a while.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Dear reader: Dealing with depression is a complex, painful experience made worse with solitude (which is why I don’t agree with the team’s decision to exile Booker AT ALL). The insult about this particular mental illness is that it can make you retreat into yourself, when it’s your community, whomever that may be (family, friends, support groups, etc.), that can offer the most help during such a difficult time. Some articles I found during my writing:
> 
> https://www.businessinsider.com/many-suicides-are-based-on-an-impulsive-decision-2014-8
> 
> https://www.psychalive.org/busting-the-myths-about-suicide/
> 
> https://www.nami.org/Your-Journey/Veterans-Active-Duty
> 
> If life sucks for you right now, and you are having trouble picturing your future, please don’t hesitate to ask for help, or if you feel the need to call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline, here it is: (800) 273-8255. No one will judge you if you just need to talk to someone.
> 
> Let’s face it: 2020 turned out to be a shit year. Life sucks for everyone right now, but it would suck so much more without you in it. Please take care.


End file.
